The long, drawn-out case of Jarndyce versus Jarndyce provides the background to this novel which takes us into Dickens’ world of impoverished people on the street, lovers fallen on hard times and the grand riches of the upper classes. It is read movingly by Sean Barrett as the main narrator, and Teresa Gallagher as the young Esther Summerson.

Dickens’s ninth novel, Bleak House, was
published between March, 1852, and
September, 1853, in twenty monthly parts. It
has two narrators, the not-altogetheromniscient
authorial voice and the personal
testimony of the central female figure,
Esther Summerson. The action of the story
largely revolves around one particular
mystery: that of Esther’s true parentage.

The novel opens in the Court of
Chancery, the Lord Chancellor’s court, to
which cases were referred which had no
remedy in common-law courts. Abuses at
the time had led to demands for reform and
Dickens uses the fictional suit of Jarndyce v.
Jarndyce—based on a real instance, a case
that had begun in 1834 and had still reached
no conclusion—to satirise and condemn the
worst excesses of an absurd, sclerotic
system.

This lawsuit, as the novel opens, is
continuing to spread its net far and wide,
connecting Lord and Lady Dedlock of
Chesney Wold; Ada Clare and Richard
Carstone, orphans given into the care of the philanthropical Mr. Jarndyce (who has so
jaundiced a view of the proceedings of the
court that he forswears all dealings with it
and counsels others, Richard in particular, to
do likewise); Esther Summerson, Jarndyce’s
other ward; the powerful and sinister lawyer
Tulkinghorn; and so on, all the way down to
the lowliest of the low, the unfortunate
crossing-sweeper Jo. In other words, it
entraps, confounds and frequently
condemns to a premature end, persons from
all levels of society.

The severe social criticism of BleakHouse aroused indignation among some of
Dickens’s contemporaries and led to
unfavourable reviews in such publications as
Blackwood’s, the Westminster Review and
Saturday Review.

In the Dictionary of National Biography
Leslie Stephens’s complaint seems to have
been that the novelist was too popular
among the lower orders:

If literary fame could safely be measured
by popularity with the half-educated,
Dickens must claim the highest position among English novelists.

Dickens was evidently paying insufficient
homage to the social system and failing to
appreciate the status quo. He was
particularly accused of being unable to
portray a gentleman, i.e. a sympathetic
member of the upper classes. In Bleak House
the chief representative of the higher orders
is Sir Leicester Dedlock, baronet. But
although his readiness to bridle at any
manifestation, however slight, of Wat
Tylerish lèse-majesté is preposterous, he is
shown to be a tender and considerate
husband; and when struck down by serious
illness, his pathetic prostration and anxiety
for his wife is rather moving. Dickens’s social
criticism is not monochromatic.

Some early readers thought the novel
rambling and ill-constructed but John
Forster, a friend and Dickens’s first
biographer, formed quite the opposite view:
‘Nothing is introduced at random,
everything tends to the catastrophe, the
various lines of the plot converge and fit to
its centre.’ That Dickens ever managed this,
in view of the fact that the novel was
published serially, is astonishing. The firsttime
reader may wonder how Mrs Jellyby,
Guppy, Mr. Smallweed, Trooper George and Mr. Bucket (to pick a number of characters
out at random) can all be relevant and not
simply incidental, but all the threads are
drawn together with great skill.

The modern view of Bleak House is that
it counts as one of Dickens’s masterworks.
J. Hillis Miller in his 1971 introduction to the
Penguin edition writes: ‘Dickens constructed
a model in little of English society in his time.
In no other of his novels is the canvas so
broad, the sweep more inclusive, the
linguistic and dramatic texture richer, the
gallery of grotesques more extraordinary.’

The function of Esther Summerson in
this complex tale—or set of neatly dovetailed
intertwining tales—is to allow the reader a
view of what the ordinary individual’s
response might be to a social organisation
that is eating itself away, a social (dis)order
that is a ghastly parody of what a just human
society ought to be, and could be.

She is far from being alone in
attempting to set right what is wrong.
Society around her is a-bristle with wellmeaning
souls who struggle to reform and
correct whatever is amiss. However, they are
mostly ineffectual either because, as with
Mrs Jellyby, attracted by the exotic woes of
‘savages’, they ignore the problems under their own noses, which consequently
worsen by dint of their neglect—or because
they aim, like Mrs Pardiggle, to bully those
whose behaviour they disapprove of into
reforming themselves. The zeal of such
charitable busybodies results in no
perceptible alteration, let alone
amelioration, of affairs. All that is enhanced
is the do-gooders’ own self-satisfaction.

There are, of course, individuals who act
in less ambitious, less ostentatious and more
fruitful ways to bring about changes and
improvements. Mr. Jarndyce provides for the
apparently orphaned Esther; pays the debts
of his self-centred friend Skimpole (largely to
help out his neglected family); rescues
Charley’s family when they are orphaned;
approves of Esther’s desire to take in the
stricken Jo; and so on. It is true that he does
not act altogether altruistically in taking
Esther under his wing, hoping that one day
she will be his wife but he can surely be
forgiven for desiring to have such a
companion. There is also the doctor,
Woodcourt, who most actively helps the
needy and, during his adventures at sea,
saves countless lives after a shipwreck.

Dickens appears to be saying that only
by such individual actions is the world in any way redeemed and that to expect
institutions to reform themselves and society
to change for the better is mere folly. It may
seem to be a message not wholly unlike that
of Voltaire’s Candide: to cultivate one’s own
garden, not, cynically, as an act of selfish
disregard for the rest of suffering humanity,
but in recognition of the fact that the best
one can do—or that some can do—is to set
an example by doing what little one can
directly (rather than at several removes
through cumbersome bureaucratic
charitable organisations), even though one’s
efforts may not always be crowned with
success.

Esther’s attempts throughout her life to
alleviate the sufferings of others are for her
just part of what it is to be human. She is
regarded by some readers as an idealised,
unreal figure but it is made clear that her
early life of emotional poverty and rigidity
has left her highly self-critical and fearful
that she is undeserving, so that she fights to
be felt worthy of love and acceptance. Her
warmth of personality and tireless
selflessness are somewhat saintly but she is
perhaps to be viewed rather like the lost
princess in a fairy tale, howbeit one gone
wrong. She may be a marvel of generosity of spirit and goodness but Dickens does not
make of her a magician. Her successes are
limited (understandably, given the
recalcitrant nature of the circumstances she
comes up against). She cannot save Richard,
Jo, nor the bricklayers’ families, but she
inspires Caddy, Mrs Jellyby’s put-upon
daughter, to break away and make a life for
herself, gives her good advice concerning
her engagement to Prince and demonstrates
to her good housekeeping practices; she
does her best to teach Charley how to read
and write, and on a personal level triumphs
over her disfiguring illness, the shock both of
the discovery of her true identity and of the
almost immediate loss of the real mother
who informs her of it; and ultimately she
does not let the severe warning of her
adoptive mother ruin her life.

Bleak House is far from being a gloomy
novel albeit that there is much darkness in it—darkness which links the sterile, deadened
world of the Dedlocks of Chesney Wold and
the wretched infernal region of Tom-all-
Alone’s. It is lightened by means of comedy
and those positive endeavours by such
characters as Esther and her guardian to
counter the evils of the world.

The comedy is very powerful but never merely for its own sake. The depiction of the
Court of Chancery and its futile dealings or
pseudo-dealings is itself humorous but that
humour is dark and at times disperses to
reveal the stark realities of the London of the
time with its wretched slums and huddled
poor hunting for scraps on the human dung
heaps and in the muddy sludge that befouls
the streets.

The domestic arrangements of Mrs
Jellyby, for another instance, are both very
funny and at the same time pitiable, as she
ignores her own children in favour of
wretches across the seas. The Reverend Mr.
Chadband, with his orotund vacuities
boomed into the receptive ears of meanspirited
souls like the desiccated Mrs
Snagsby, is an entertaining figure but he is
one of those for whom words supersede
deeds and he unsurprisingly reveals himself
to be perfectly hypocritical in seeking to
make pecuniary profit from his knowledge
of ‘a sinful secret’.

Such characters, in which the novel
abounds, are, as ever with Dickens,
wonderfully named: Guppy, Skimpole,
Turveydrop, Tulkinghorn, Dedlock. They
seem to sum up the individual concerned,
sometimes more or less literarily (Dedlock), but more often by association. Such names
are fantastical but Bleak House, is not a
naturalistic work. Its most famous incident
is the manner of the death of Krook, which
may surprise the newcomer to the novel. In
1872 G.H. Lewes published an essay
criticising Dickens for his distortions and
grotesque exaggerations. To his friend
Forster, Dickens commented: ‘in these
times, when the tendency is to be frightfully
literal and catalogue-like…I have an idea…that the very holding of popular literature
through a kind of popular dark age, may
depend on such fanciful treatment.’

Critics have noted affinities with Balzac
and Gogol, and certainly Dostoevsky was an
admirer. When a friend asked him what
reading matter he should offer his
daughter, he wrote: ‘All Dickens’ books,
absolutely without exception.’ Some have
sought to make a case that Kafka’s work
shares characteristics with those of Dickens.
Be that as it may, our greatest novelist
aimed, in the words of Graham Storey, ‘to
be master of both factual truth and
imaginative life.’

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